The Graham Cracker Brand We Skip Every Time

With s'mores season right upon us, there are a few ingredients that you'll want to have either in your pantry or on your shopping list — marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers. While you might be tempted to focus on which are the best marshmallows or the melty chocolate to fill your snack, getting the right graham crackers is just as important.

Graham crackers not only add crunch to your dessert, but they also help to balance out the sweetness of the marshmallow and the buttery richness of the chocolate. To make your job easier, Daily Meal ranked the best graham cracker brands. And, if you're out shopping for these ingredients, there's one option that we'd recommend avoiding — Partake.

In terms of taste and appearance, these crackers just don't hit the same way as, say, classic Honey Maid. What's more, they don't have the same great texture and deliver an unpleasant mouthfeel that might end up subtracting from your s'more experience rather than adding to it.

The issues with Partake's crackers start the second you open the box. Unlike a classic graham cracker that has stood the test of time, these snacks look more like tea biscuits. They have rounded edges and come in a square shape rather than the sharp-cornered rectangles we're used to.

Biting into the snack, things don't get much better. Unlike the sweet treat that slowly melts in your mouth, you get a gritty texture on your tongue. Plus, the biscuits themselves are difficult to bite into and are thicker than what you're probably used to with a classic graham cracker. All that amounts to an unpleasant mouthfeel that doesn't quite fulfill your desire for a classic cracker.

In terms of flavor, things also go downhill quickly. Whereas your standard graham cracker has a subtly sweet honey flavor, these particular biscuits taste overwhelmingly of cinnamon. In fact, the taste of the spice is so strong that it drowns out any other tasting notes in the sweet, leaving you with a disappointing cinnamon stick-esque snack.

Although there's plenty to dislike about Partake, it's important to note that these biscuits aren't entirely bad. They do have a few redeeming qualities. For one thing, these snacks are committed to using many organic ingredients. You'll find both organic cane sugar and organic light brown sugar in them, and will happily note that they're non-GMO certified.

What's more, they're a good choice for those with food sensitivities or dietary restrictions. Partake's crackers are vegan-certified, so you can trust you're not ingesting any animal products by mistake. They're also certified gluten-free, using a blend of sorghum flour and gluten-free oat flour. Additionally, Partake's graham crackers are free of other allergens such as peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, wheat, milk, soy, sesame, and even sulfites and casein. Still, despite these positives, these treats leave much to be desired. While they might work well for those with dietary restrictions, if you can avoid relying on these, you'll wind up having a tastier and more pleasant eating experience if you go with a different brand.